Molora at the Barbican Pit

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Watching Yael Farber’s extraordinary relocation of Greek myth to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing in South Africa was among the most difficult experiences I have ever had in the theatre. All the more reason to see it. This Farber Foundry production, first presented in association with Johannesburg’s Market Theatre, is harrowing almost beyond endurance. It is also potently, elementally theatrical, mesmerisingly ritualistic and deeply and uncompromisingly humane. Raw and unflinching, even as it horrifies, it demands attention.

Based mainly on Aeschylus’ Oresteia but drawing, too, on Sophocles, Farber’s production brilliantly translates the bloody cycle of vengeance in the House